Roger regarded the city and the river that bled out of it from his vantage atop the bluff. Below him a scattering of brush and small trees dropped down sharply some fifty feet and then flattened out as it made its way to the river’s edge. Spring was erupting in this northwestern corner of the country and golden sun played across the water’s ripples as they made their way out to the mighty Pacific to lose themselves and merge and mingle with all the waters of the west. On the far shore, enormous white oil tanks sat stoically, oblivious to the river’s movement. The tanks glowed like burning phosphorus in the noontime sun, except for the flat, cool military chevrons in blue and red that made up the corporate logo, the familiar face of that particular buyer and seller of petroleum. Unknown gears and chains and even tiny people moved and hummed about on the platforms at the base of the tanks, performing functions and moving things from one place to another. Roger followed the progress of one of the little men. He was dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit like the kind in county jail and wore a white hardhat that made his head glow right along with the tanks themselves. The little man bent, seemed to wrench and pull on some dial or gauge of unimaginable purpose. Even from such a distance his movements betrayed his heat. The sun was high, the winter rains finally over, and all that light was reflecting off the white paint and the surface of the water.
Pirate Town
Devin J. Ayers (1975-2017) was a writer, educator, social activist, and scholar living in Santa Fe NM where he taught at the Academy for Technology & the Classics. An admirer of Kerouac and other Beats, Ayers spent his early twenties riding freight trains from coast to coast, sleeping in national forests, reading in libraries, and conversing with some of America’s more marginalized storytellers. At St. John’s College, where he earned his Master’s in Eastern Classics in 2005, he translated Sanskrit and studied Taoist Philosophy. The estimable body of work he left behind deals with class struggle, humankind’s place in nature, punk rock, skateboarding, and our often fraught but beautiful pursuit of peace and deeper meaning. At the time of his death he was authoring a book on pedagogy as well as revising a novel based on his experiences living in a collective squat in Portland, OR during the punk rock era. A teacher whose greatest passion was advocating for those who had no advocate, the Devin J. Ayers Young Writers Scholarship assists students who march to the beat of their own drum with college-related expenses. Please contact the Academy for Technology & the Classics for details.
More Fiction
I leaned in to kiss his forehead. Please, just another day, another month, I thought. Was a year too much to ask for?
When Mom found my stash like she had drug dog senses or something, she made a huge deal then called me into her bathroom, my sack in one hand and the cordless in the other, threatening to call Dad, which of course she never did.
The clock on the wall was red. It said 3:37. Tick. Tick. Tick. The paint running dry, the rim cracked and falling to pieces. I went to the bathroom. It said OMBRES which any idiot knows is spelled wrong.